Magic and The Schools
Magic in the Prince of Nothing is the use of the spell-caster's will to influence the world, often contrary to the plans of the gods. Thus, magic is viewed as sacrilegious by the Thousand Temples, and is condemned in the Inrithi nations. Sorcerous Schools arose in response to this pressure, creating powerful political and military forces apart from the religious order.
The human population of Eärwa is not all able to use magic. Rather, that ability is confined to the Few, a small subset of people. Additionally, the various Schools of magic only allow male practitioners, further dwindling the number of possible sorcerers. Even so, those who choose to study magic are granted large amounts of power, balanced by a lack of religious acceptance and a vulnerability to chorae, small spherical antimagic talismans.
There are two main types of magic used in the northern Three Seas: Gnostic and Anagogic. While Gnostic magic is largely forgotten (being the dominant art of the Ancient North, destroyed during the First Apocalypse), Anagogic magic is more widely studied among multiple schools.
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Famous quotes containing the words magic and, magic and/or schools:
“You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Thou treacherous, base deserter of my flame,
False to my passion, fatal to my fame,
Through what mistaken magic dost thou prove
So true to lewdness, so untrue to love?”
—John Wilmot, Earl Of Rochester (1647–1680)
“If the women of the United States, with their free schools and all their enlarged liberties, are not superior to women brought up under monarchical forms of government, then there is no good in liberty.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)